"Unhappy boy," he groaned, "the fowler has him in his net again." Then he scrunched the thin paper in his hand, and set his teeth hard like a man who sees the dentist coming towards him with the forceps.
"I must go down to them; there is nothing else for me to do. I dare not take the responsibility of keeping this to myself an hour longer. It is all in the day's work, as the lion-tamer said when the lion prepared to bite off his head." And after this grim jest Malcolm summoned Malachi and confided the Gladstone bag to his care, and they sallied forth together. At Waterloo he sent off a telegram to Verity; a few minutes later he was in the train and on his way to Earlsfield.
CHAPTER XXIX
"SHE IS A WICKED WOMAN"
Am I cold—
Ungrateful—that for these most manifold
High gifts, I render nothing back at all?
Not so! not cold, but very poor instead.
—E. BARRETT BROWNING.
To love, is to be made up of faith and service.
—SHAKESPEARE.
It was half-past six when Malcolm reached the well-known station, and taking a fly bade the man drive him to the "King's Arms," an old-fashioned inn of good repute about half a mile distant from the Wood House. Here he secured a room for the night; ordered supper, of which he partook without appetite; then sallied forth to pay his call. It was late in October, and the darkness of the country roads surprised him, accustomed as he was to the well-lighted London streets; he could scarcely find out his bearings until a welcome light streamed out from the windows of the Crow's Nest. Malcolm lingered a moment at the little gate. "It was there I dwelt in my fool's paradise," he muttered, "and tried to eat of the forbidden fruit. Now I know good and evil, and am a sadder and wiser man." And then he went on doggedly; but he stopped again before he reached the gate of the Wood House, for he knew intuitively that he had stumbled into the little path leading to the woodlands. He strained his eyes through the darkness, but could see nothing-only the chill, damp October wind played round him, and the smell of moist earth and decaying vegetation filled his nostrils. "Change and decay in all around I see," he thought heavily; but as he turned away and crossed the road a sudden remembrance came to him and made him giddy.
It was morning or early afternoon, he forgot which, and the sunshine was filtering through the firs, and steeping his senses with the warm, resinous perfume—"spices of Araby," he had called it to himself, for he loved the scent above all things. He had clambered up the bank to pick some honeysuckle, and then the little gate had clanged on its hinges, and he had peeped through the brambles to see who was coming.
And of course he knew who it was—that tall, robust young woman in the white sun-bonnet who came down the path swinging her arms slightly, but with the free proud step of an empress. "Elizabeth, Elizabeth!" he had whispered even then, and all the manhood within him seemed to welcome her gracious presence. Poor fool—poor blind fool that he was!